After two weeks of Omura asking for more work, she was finally given two projects she could sink her teeth into. The first was to help us get internet set up. The second was to help us find a school for our daughter – multiple future Tales. Omura accompanied us to the schools for the interviews. One ran late and we took Omura out to eat. Omura spent two years in the States studying at the University of Georgia. Her English is kind of like the orange VW Bug I had in high school: it wasn’t very pretty on the outside, it was kind of holey on the inside, but if you got it rollin’ down a hill and popped the clutch, it would get you where you were going.
My wife asked, “What do we want to eat?” Omura said, “You know, I like international cuisine.”
I am always amused when I hear something grammatically correct that really shouldn’t be a sentence. “I like international cuisine.” I don’t know any one who would say that. (Well, other than Omura.) I know some country boys that would say, “I’ll eat anything that don’t eat me first.” I know friends who will say, “If you cook it, I’ll try it.” I started thinking about this, “I like international cuisine.” Does this mean she likes Thai and Ethiopian cuisines? Did she get to the point while in Georgia where she could distinguish between NC style BBQ and Memphis style BBQ? Did she have a favorite dive where she could get some really good Soul food in GA? Does this mean she likes Jamaican jerk chicken, borscht and paella?
As I am slowly learning, things don’t always mean what they first appear to mean. “I like international cuisine” actually means “I like Chinese food. I like Italian food. And I like hamburgers.” It has taken me awhile to totally figure this out and you need to understand that while Omura was the first to use this sentence, she is by no means the last.
“What?” you may ask. Yea, I didn’t understand at first either. But here’s my theory: I do after all have time to sit around and ponder things like this.
Japanese food tends to be very delicately flavored. I have long enjoyed going to restaurants and guessing the ingredients in a dish. In Japan I order things like three flavor soba, and I want to complain because I can only detect two out of three; which ain’t bad if you are Meatloaf.
So what if you took your same ingredients and instead of flavoring them delicately you really threw on a heavy spicy sauce, and gave it some punch with some extra garlic, ginger or Chinese five spices. What do you get? Chinese food.
What if you take that marvelous creation, the perfect noodle, Soba, and instead of debating on whether to slurp it hot or cold, you lose the nutty flavor and put tomatoes, or cream sauce or pesto, or, hey, here’s some left over tuna, and mixed it with the noodles. What do you get? Italian food.
One of the biggest shocks since arriving is buying beef by the gram. Do you happen to have a paperclip setting there beside you in the office? Go ahead, reach over, pick it up. Feel that? That’s a gram. We buy meat here by the gram. Go to your favorite deli take a look at the scale that shows the various widths their slicing machine will cut the meat. All of the meat slicing machines in Japan are stuck on the setting a hair above shaved. Pam got a sewing machine last weekend. Since she is never home long enough to use it, I set it up and sew pieces of meat together so my teeth can have a refresher course in biting and chewing.
So, what completes the International triumvirate of cuisine? Hamburger. How does that fit in and where does that come from? Well, I am going to blame this one on the GI’s. You already have little pieces of meat, might as well grind it up and smush it back together. We already have Asian and European cuisines covered, might as well throw in something from the Americas.
You know what? Now that I think about it, I like International cuisine, too.
written02052004